A funny thing happened when my son came out four years ago: every bit of the conditional love in my life went away.

I didn't know that the love in my life was conditional, because I was always meeting the conditions: saying the right things, going to the right kind of church.

But when it became clear that we were no longer going to say the right things or go to the right kind of church, all that love and support went away.

It was so unbelievably painful.

SO PAINFUL.

BUT.

AND.

ThankGiving Square chapel, Dallas (me and my cell phone)

Just lately I've realized that the love we have now is truly unconditional: with our kids, at our new church home, with our friends who have stuck and stayed.

Anyone who's here now loves and accepts us as we are, without judgment or criticism.

That's something I've never before experienced in my life.

Previously, I avoided judgment and criticism by complying.

Now that's no longer an option, and my life is better for it.

The other thing I'd never before experienced in my life was the true freedom to be myself in the world, without the constraint any kind of religious boss.

I did not know how much my soul needed to escape those constraints, but it turns out my soul needed it. So badly.

I'm by no means an Enneagram expert, but I'll tell you that I appear to be an Enneagram One with a 2-wing. Type One is the Reformer, Type Two is the Helper. Put them together: "Advocate."

As a woman, Type Two is perfectly acceptable in our culture. As a wife, as a mother, I was really good at being empathetic, warm-hearted, and self-sacrificing, so I leaned hard on that side of myself for many years.

However, the Type One/Reformer was the less acceptable part of me: called scary, called mean, often told to be quiet, to calm down, always simmering away in the background, feeling frustrated and unfulfilled.

"Ones are conscientious and ethical, with a strong sense of right and wrong. They are teachers, crusaders, and advocates for change: always striving to improve things, but afraid of making a mistake. Well-organized, orderly, and fastidious, they try to maintain high standards, but can slip into being critical and perfectionistic. They typically have problems with resentment and impatience. At their Best: wise, discerning, realistic, and noble. Can be morally heroic." (The Enneagram Institute)

"Critical and perfectionistic" and "having problems with resentment and impatience" describes my emotional state for many years.

Because my passion for justice, for healthy change, was exactly as the prophet Jeremiah describes: "a fire shut up in my bones."

When we left the evangelical fold, the fire was set free to write whatever I want, say whatever I want, see whatever clients I want.

The fire in my bones is now focused on doing good for my family, my clients, and myself. No church, no organization, no boss gets to tell me that I have to abrogate my ethics as a parent or a therapist or a human being in order to comply with a man-made system.

There is no "I love you BUT" in my life.

Only Love, only Love.

Love is the ethic.

Love is the North Star.

Love is the Law and all the Prophets.

The gift of unconditional Love and the freedom to exercise my true Self powerfully has healed me in ways I did not know I needed healing.

I didn't know I needed this healing, and I didn't even realize this healing was happening until I started having the oddest experience of freedom and total release (which a lot of people would call forgiveness), even in situations that would formerly have been extremely distressing to me.

I can enter into spaces where I have been judged, criticized, gossiped about, and condemned, and feel totally at peace.

I used to come away from toxic situations needing days, weeks, months, or even years to recover.

Now I can walk into the situation in peace and freedom, and I can walk away from the situation in peace and freedom.

It seems like an awful lot of toxic theology comes my way, and lately there's been a real spate of blogs and posts that seem to imply that unconditional love means taking whatever abuse comes your way.

If someone can find me a church blog that tells men to just take whatever abuse comes to them, please pass it along. But I don't see that narrative being much advanced.

I think maybe it's because men are doing the abusing and men are running the churches. I wish I didn't sound so paranoid, but it's starting to look like a pattern from where I sit.

At any rate, in one of my Facebook groups, we got to talking about what unconditional love actually means, if not going back to get your lights punched out time and time again.

I think there are two main points we must keep in mind.

ONE: I AM NOT THE SOURCE OF UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, SO IT'S NOT UP TO ME TO SUPPLY LOVE TO EVERY ABUSIVE PERSON ON THE PLANET.

Unconditional Love means that every human being is inherently precious and valuable.

**Yes, even the abusers. God loves them too. Which just proves that you really don't want me to be the source of unconditional Love because I just don't have it in me. Anything I'd give to the abusers would be pure pretend, and I think they need better than that. They need real, healing Love. So let's just accept that God gets to be in charge of that and wish them well.**

Because I'm not the source of unconditional Love, however, I am not required to be close to people who are abusive, unpleasant, or in any way toxic to me.

I can still accept that the person is precious and valuable, and probably doing the best that they can, while I remove myself from toxic situations.

Unconditional Love will still be available to that person, even when I am not.

TWO: I AM INCLUDED IN UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, SO I GET TO RECEIVE LOVE JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE.

Because I am included in unconditional Love, that Love does not allow others to abuse or harm me.

Unconditional Love must include love FOR ME just like everyone else, otherwise it's a very limited, seriously conditional sort of love.

Unconditional Love does not condone abuse FOR ME, just like unconditional Love does not condone abuse for anyone else.

(Those of us who grew up in abusive systems will have a hard time believing that unconditional Love includes us, but sit with it a while.)

Because the other person is included in love,

even while they are being toxic to me,

I can do what is healthy for myself

while trusting that Love will do what is best for that person as well.

Unconditional Love does not depend on me, and unconditional Love always includes me.

Of course we all know this is just the natural growth cycle of this very healthy, mature vine. It's doing exactly what it's supposed to do: exuberant spring blooms, a big die-off, and then sporadic blooms throughout the summer, depending on how much rain and heat we get.

The problem is, though, that we don't accept these kinds of growth cycles very easily when it comes to ourselves.

And if we're in a religious system that pushes the perfection narrative hard, our religious system may not accept our natural, maturing growth cycle very well either.

If we're maturing, we're going to be growing.

And if we're growing, we're going to be changing.

Change is inherent to growth.

You can't have "spiritual growth" without spiritual change.

Scary stuff, right?

Fear can keep us sticking a bunch of perfect plastic flowers all over the place, rather than allowing ourselves to go through whatever is next in our spiritual process.

Maybe it's a bit less scary if we look to the example of Jesus and consider the flowers, for they grow and mature and change.

It certainly made me psychotic and suicidal for a while, after I'd exhausted the limits of what I thought it meant: the perfection of my own personal morality project.

Tangerine Crossvine on the pergola over my back patio.

Day in and day out, I worked at perfectionism as hard as I could.

I didn't drink, I didn't chew, I wouldn't go with the boys that do. I went to a Christian college, only had Christian friends, was at church every time the doors were open, became a missionary.

I looked good--even GREAT--on the outside, but on the inside, the more perfect I tried to be, the worse it got.

There was no rest for my soul, no joy in my heart.

I was exhausted by all the performing, all the attempts at perfection, frustrated with myself for never being perfect, and angry with anyone who wasn't trying as hard as I was.

I was disconnected from myself, disconnected from others, and increasingly disconnected from God, who apparently was not interested in participating in my personal morality project, since he wasn't answering my prayers for perfection.

After all that hard work, nothing turned out like it was supposed to.

And I couldn't quit, because perfectionism is a gerbil wheel.

The minute you stop running, the jig is up.

Those of us who have tried perfectionism, tested it to its outer limits like I have, we know that the fruit is bad. We know it doesn't work. We know it's rotten to the core.

People ask how to get out of the trap of perfectionism, and the underlying concern I hear is this: how do I exit perfectionism perfectly?

Because this is how us perfectionists roll. We don't ever want to give perfectionism up. It owns us, body and soul. (It might actually be the devil, come to think of it.)

I'll be honest, y'all: I don't know how to do this pretty, because I was such a determined perfectionist that even when I knew it was wrong and bad and crazy, I was so afraid of jumping off the wheel that I just kept going until I was psychotic.

I kept doing perfectionism until my body and brain gave out and perfectionism was no longer an option, and then I found this:

LOVE.

Love lifted me.

That was pretty much it.

When I couldn't do anything,

when I couldn't perform,

when I was the farthest from perfection I'd ever been in my life,

Love healed me.

(And Love heals me still, every single day.)

I don't think it really matters how you get off the gerbil wheel, or even if it's pretty. It's like that old song: "Just slip out the back, Jack, make a new plan, Stan, no need to be coy, Roy, just get yourself free."

I made a mess getting myself free, and it came out okay, because that's how Love works.

A while after my perfectionism-fueled breakdown, I ran across that Bible verse that had plagued me all my life: "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Matthew 5:48

And for the first time I could remember, I looked at the context: Love.

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Do not even tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even Gentiles do the same?

Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.

When this verse talks about being perfect, it's talking about Love.

It makes sense if you think about it, because the Bible clearly says, I John 4:8:

GOD IS LOVE.

If we want to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect, then "perfection" is going to be Love; in fact, it's going to be a radically inclusive Love that gives goodness to everyone, and not just the people we deem "righteous."

**That Love includes our undeserving, imperfect selves, by the way. We are not excluded from Love.**

And how do we come to be so full of Love that we can love even our enemies and do good for the people who are evil to us--and even love and do good to ourselves?

It's as simple as this: receiving Love and letting it fill us until it overflows.

When you're ready for Love, there's nothing more to do.

Just receive.

Will it make a mess when you jump off the gerbil wheel?

Maybe. Probably.

But when the spinning stops, you'll find that you're free indeed.

And then the strangest thing starts to happen.

Love, as it fills you up, starts to crowd out all the not-Love.

When Love comes to town and buys up all the real estate, you'll stop doing things that harm yourself and others. It's incredible the energy and the life you can access, for yourself and for others, when you stop beating yourself to death trying to be perfect.

Andy did a little word study on the Greek word teleios, which is rendered "perfect" in Matthew 5:48, and he tells me that it has several shades of meaning: mature, complete, finished.

I just had to laugh when he told me this, because YES. YES. YES.

When we get off the gerbil wheel, this is exactly what we find to be true: there's no more perfectionism, but everything is more and more mature and complete and whole in Love.

I remember the day when I realized that I did not truly believe that God loved me like the Bible says he does: unconditionally, passionately, sacrificially.

I gave lip service to those ideas, but my life was all about getting everything right to avoid punishment. I was a gerbil on the wheel of spiritual perfectionism and performance: an overseas missionary, working as hard as I could to stave off the fear that I would never be enough.

I date my faith-shift to the day that a retreat speaker told our group: "God delights in you." And those words rang in me like a gong, and I knew. I knew. I knew.

I didn't know that I was faith-shifting then. I didn't realize that I'd been invited on a whole new journey.

I didn't understand that all the bad fruit in my life--the anxiety, the exhaustion, the judgment of myself and others--was directly connected to the bad theology I'd ingested, that God was primarily wrathful, demanding total obedience immediately, and if I didn't do everything just right, he was going to throw me into a lake of fire and torture me forever.

It wasn't until I'd been coverted by "God delights in you" into truly experiencing God's Love that the bad fruit slowly began dropping away.

And slowly, slowly (because this is fruit, you know) new fruit began to grow.

Apricot blossoms, Escalante, Utah

It's been 15 years since "God delights in you."

And I would not trade the person that I am today, to go back and be who I was before.

Plus, Andy does not want to live with that person ever again, and I don't want to live with the person he was then, either.

We were both miserably being the best we could, and the fruit was just bad.

We both look at our lives now, at the fruit of LOVE, where we have been and where we have come, and there's no turning back, no turning back.

We don't have to be theatened by punishment, threatened by hell, to live a life of Love.

We don't have to be coerced or manipulated into perfectionism and performance.

We have a life full of rest for our souls, a life overflowing with an abundance of peace.

I'm not trying to convince anybody else of anything here on my blog.

I just feel like the blind man that Jesus healed, who ended up in hot water with the religious leaders:

So a second time they called for the man who had been blind and said, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.” He answered, "Whether He is a sinner or not I do not know. There is one thing I do know: I was blind, but now I see!" John 9:24, 25

I don't know what your story is, where your road needs to go, or what your fruit is like.

He cautiously decided to give it a try, with the goal of taking our family to Hawaii.

We left the Big Island in 2013, having spent less than $1500 for the entire week (including travel, lodging, food) for our family of 7 adults.

Once we realized what points could do, there was no turning back.

Since that first successful trip five years ago, we have traveled to Hawaii (again), Italy, Canada (twice), Hungary & Czech Republic, Ireland & Scotland, plus a bunch of cities within the continental US like San Francisco, Chicago, Las Vegas, Phoenix...and the list goes on.

I've loved writing about those trips here at kaybruner, but I've never really felt able to write as much as I want, or to talk about the tricks and tips that make traveling more manageable. I've wanted to write more, but this isn't a travel blog, so I've held myself back.

On our recent trip to Arizona and Utah, we stopped by The Watchtower on the Grand Canyon South Rim. On the top floor of The Watchtower, they've installed those telescope-viewer thingies, the kind where you put in a quarter and it magnifies everything.

I happened to notice the label on the telescope's leg, and took a photo that captures exactly what I love most about travel: there's always more to explore.

As we drove the next few days, I started talking with Andy about all the things I want to write about, but haven't: the fish and chips we ate in Scotland, what it was like to get towels at the thermals baths in Budapest, what kind of rain jacket saved our trip to Ireland from damp despair.

We started talking about creating a blog just for travel stuff, and what we might call it. On the last day of our trip, I remembered the words in this photo: "There is more to explore."

Amazingly, no one had bought that domain name for a travel site, so we snapped it up and went to work.

Today, Andy and I are happy to announce our new collaborative project:

I've been having the best writing fun of my life creating content for the site, and I've only begun to scratch the surface! I'll be adding more travel stories as fast as my little fingers can type them out.

Beyond our favorite travel stories, we want to share the tips and tricks that make travel fun and easy for us.

A couple of weeks ago, Andy got asked the question: "So, if you don't believe in hell, then what does Jesus save us from?"

It was an opportunity for a really interesting discussion about the Greek word commonly translated "salvation" or "saved" in the New Testament and what we think it means.

Here's an interesting fact that we often forget: our English Bibles are all translations. Not one single word in them is actually the original word written by the original authors.

Every single word has been translated from one language into another, and when you translate, you have to choose what word you're going to use in the receptor language, in this case English.

The New Testament was mostly written in Koine Greek, the everyday kind of Greek used for shopping lists and letters home to Mom.

Because Koine Greek was so widely used, we've got a lot of information about what particular words most commonly mean, based on a large sample of original texts apart from the New Testament.

This is great, right? Because it means we can be really accurate in our New Testament translations, when all these other texts confirm the meanings of each word.

(Super important if you believe in the literal, inerrancy of the text, which is fundamental to the fundamentalism I grew up in.)

Well, not so fast.

Take this word that's translated "salvation" or "saved" for example.

The Greek word is "soteria" (noun) or "sozo" (verb).

Scholar William Barclay points out that the the most common meaning of soteria/sozo in everyday Koine Greek sources refers to bodily health, wellness, or well-being.

A dutiful son might write home and inquire about the "soteria" of his parents. He's not asking about their eternal security; he's asking about their well-being, their health.

Here's what we need to understand: when translators come to this word "soteria" or "sozo" in the New Testament, they have a choice about whether they're going to pick the most common meaning (health, healing) or a less common meaning (salvation, saved).

Even the "salvation/saved" meaning of "soteria/sozo" is not about being saved from hell like we've been taught to think. The "salvation/saved" meaning refers to a situation like being saved from disaster, released from prison.

None of the meanings of "soteria/sozo" have anything to do with being saved from a literal, burning hell in Koine Greek, because the idea of a literal hell is a construct created much later on. (The hell construct is largely based on bad translations of other words like Gehenna and Sheol, which don't mean "hell" at all. Resources for study below.)

Guess which meaning of "soteria/sozo" English translators have picked: the less common meaning.

Why?

Because they're reading their theology into the text. They've been taught that this word means "salvation" and "saved", even though this is the less common meaning, and so that's how they translate it. They don't necessarily use good translation principles with this word "soteria/sozo." They use their assumptions.

And then we read into the text with even more assumptions about what "salvation" means, in light of the constructs of hell we've learned in our particular religious tradition.

So how does this impact our understanding of "soteria/sozo"?

Let's take a verse we've all read a million times, John 3:17.

"For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save ("sozo") the world through him." NIV

We immediately think of sinners in the hands of an angry God, being snatched out of the pit of hell, right?

But when we know that this meaning did not exist in the Koine Greek, we can use our new-found knowledge and postulate that perhaps we are being saved from the disaster that the world or our lives have become, or from the prisons of our own making.

And what if we choose the most common meaning for "sozo" here?

"For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to heal ("sozo") the world through him."

Wow.

Want to follow the Way of Jesus?

You don't have to beat yourself or anybody else down with the bad news that God is going to burn us in hell forever.

You can actually be anxious for nothing, because you are loved with an everlasting Love that is never, ever a threat to you or anyone you love, and only, always a blessing of healing and wholeness and life in abundance for us all.

Sit with that a while and let it change your life.

The Way of Jesus saves us from the disasters of this world.

The Way of Jesus saves us from the prisons of our own making.

The Way of Jesus heals us and our loved ones and the whole world.

This is the Good News, worth sharing.

Now go into the world,

finally,

in peace,

indeed.

Happy Easter.

Resources for study

The documentary Hellbound? is an excellent starting point. You get an overview of all the various Christian perspectives on the teaching of hell in a short film version.

Last year over Easter, we flew to Las Vegas and did the five Utah National Parks in four days. This year, we had planned to go with friends to Sedona, which we had visited once before and loved with a passion. Our friends unfortunately had to bail, so we started thinking about other things in the area that could entertain us in their stead.

Antelope Canyon had been on my bucket list for a long time, and then we realized that the Grand Canyon was basically right around the corner, and then we realized that it was only another 3-hour drive to Escalante, Utah, which we'd sadly had to bypass last year.

Essentially, this trip morphed from five peaceful days in Sedona into another one of our waste-no-daylight, rest-when-we're-dead events.

DAY ONE: Phoenix to Grand Canyon South Rim

Just a blip north of Phoenix on I-17 is the experimental town Arcosanti, Arizona, the brainchild of artist, architect and all-around visionary Paolo Soleri. I'll send you over to Wikipedia for a full explanation of the project. Here I'll just say it's $15 and a couple of hours well-spent for the tour, and highly comforting to know that there are places in the world where sustainable living is actually being practiced on a daily basis.

Everywhere we went across northern Arizona and southern Utah, we heard about water shortages and weird weather patterns. There's a timer in the shower at the Grand Canyon, asking everyone to take showers under 5 minutes. Where we stayed in Escalante, they're already on the water restrictions that normally apply in August. It rained the day before we got there, which was the first precipitation they'd seen in 5 months. That's right: they got NO SNOW all winter, which means no snowmelt going into the rivers and aquifers for the summer growing season.

Places like Arcosanti that teach us how to live lightly on the earth are more necessary than ever before.

From Arcosanti, we drove through the Saguaro forest and up into the Ponderosa pine forest around Flagstaff, at 6,000 feet elevation. After a stop at Fat Olive's for Italian-certified, internationally-award-winning wood oven pizza, we drove on to Maswick Lodge on the south rim of the Grand Canyon for the night.

DAY TWO: Grand Canyon and Antelope Canyon to Escalante, Utah

When we woke up, the Grand Canyon was so full of fog that the view was a blank white wall. As we drove, fortunately, the sun and wind pushed the fog away and we were offered one fantastic viewpoint after another.

Equally grand, but less well-known is Antelope Canyon (famously featured as the wallpaper on Windows 7, for those of us old and uncool enough to recall Windows 7).

Andy researched this up and discovered that noon is the optimal time to be in the canyon, because of these beams of light that only shine into the canyon when the sun is directly overhead.

Being in Antelope reminded me mostly of being in the Sistine Chapel. It's packed to the gills with tourists, and everybody is looking straight up, while the staff tells you to keep moving. it's not really a meditative experience but it's so amazing that you just go with it.

Antelope Canyon is in the Navajo Nation, and you can only enter with a tour group. I'm not a big fan of doing things with tour groups, but in this case it was excellent because our guide, Thena, knew exactly how to get the absolute best shots of the canyon from every angle, and how to set every single cell phone's ISO and white balance to capture the best color. Whether you had the latest iPhone, or a lowly old Motorola like mine, she knew what to do to get the best out of it. Thena rocked Antelope at high noon! You can find her at Navajo Tours.

Continuing north, we soon crossed into Utah and found ourselves driving right by Bryce Canyon National Park. Since we hiked at Bryce just last year, we stopped for a quick half-mile walk to Mossy Cave and a moment of peaceful communion with the hoo-doos. They are just so beautifully otherwordly and wonderful!

We spent the next two nights in Escalante, Utah, at this adorable bunkhouse on the farm of Shannon and Jenifer Steed. You do have to scamper through the orchard to the separate bath house, but it's only $46 a night and there are baby sheep right next door. We loved it!

DAY THREE: Hiking Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

The area that makes up Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was the last tract of land in the continental United States to be mapped. It is as wild as the West gets: lonely, untamed, rugged, stunningly gorgeous.

We got out early in the morning to the Escalante Mercantile, where we found a breakfast croissant and a sack lunch to go, while the owner told us a bit about her adventures restoring an 1800's Mormon settler's home into the cutest grocery store on planet Earth.

From there, we proceeded to our first hiking destination of the day: Peekaboo Canyon and Spooky Gulch, 26 miles down a dirt road called Hole-in-the-Rock. We arrived at the trailhead and emerged from our rented Nissan Sentra to accolades from the drivers of the other vehicles, all 4WD. Andy definitely deserves a prize for driving that road without damaging that little car, and what Thrifty Rent-a-Car doesn't know won't hurt 'em.

Shannon, our host at the bunkhouse, told us to go "up Peekaboo and down Spooky."

What Shannon didn't tell us is that there are two ways to go "up Peekaboo."

One: you are a confident boulderer.

Two: your companion is a confident boulderer, and said companion goes up first and throws you a rope.

We attempted to go "up Peekaboo" under neither of those conditions, and Peekaboo sat there laughing and saying, "up yours."

Let me interpret the above photo for you just a bit. Andy is walking toward a giant mud puddle in front of the canyon entrance, which can be skirted by balancing on those logs off to the left. In the middle of the photo, you see that scoop in the rock? That's the canyon entrance, about 12 feet above the giant mud puddle.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to climb up that 12-foot rock face without falling into the mud or breaking any bones. There's one decent ledge about halfway up, which fools you into thinking that this feat is possible by 52-year-old sedentary therapist types. After the ledge, there are three tiny indentations to help your fingers and toes up the last half of the climb and into the--wait for it--knee-deep pool of water beyond the entrance.

I got stuck above the ledge, my left fingers in one idention, my right toes in another, and my left foot sliding off the rock face. Andy was behind me trying to push me up, and some firefighter type was leaning down from the top saying he could pull me up.

With my fingers and toes slipping out of their spots, I said, "What would it be like if I just slid back off this ledge?" Andy, who never worries (photographic evidence below), at this point began to worry, probably mostly because my insurance really sucks and it would have been hell to carry me out of there with a broken leg.

After some deep yoga breathing and careful inching backward, I was able to get down without harm.

We bid farewell to Peekaboo and went on to Spooky Gulch, a kinder, gentler slot canyon, where I picked up a whole bunch of bluish-green stones that I'm hoping will come out of the rock tumbler looking like turquiose.

After spending about an hour and a half on our slot-canyon antics, we drove back toward Escalante, picnicking under the hoo-doos at Devil's Garden, then heading over to the escarpment above the Escalante River, one of my favorite views in the world.

Favorite moment of this walk: glancing up at the canyon wall to see petroglyphs: the three warriors.

Look at the top of the dome-shaped rock, then follow the dark streaks down to where they meet the curve at the bottom. The three warriors are on the cliff face just to the left of those dark streaks. There's a white shield-shaped rock just below them.

Can't see them? Don't feel bad. They really are there, but this approximates how difficult it actually is to spot petroglyphs in real life. It was just a lucky glance for me, and then we rounded a corner in the path to find a marker pointing straight at them.

DAY FOUR: Driving from Escalante to Sedona

Andy did all the routing for this trip, so I didn't realize we were doing almost a complete back-track from Escalante to Sedona. I was super excited about getting a do-over along Route 12 and Route 89-A, though. The pictures will tell you why!

We arrived in Sedona mid-afternoon and headed straight for Doe Mountain, a favorite hike from our last visit. Just half a mile from the parking lot to the top, this hike offers a lot of bang for the buck, and an opportunity for Andy to dangle his feet off of high ledges.

We checked into the lovely and serene Casa Sedona, and then headed up the mesa to Airport Loop to watch the sunset, a time honored Sedona tradition. We arrived about 6:00 for a 6:45 sunset, and it was perfect timing.

Pro tip: turn your back to the sun and watch the rocks change color--that's the big show! Once the sun is down, turn around and enjoy the colors in the sky.

After sunset, we headed down to the Golden Goose Grill for dinner where we snagged a two-top in the bar. A guy at the bar was talking about how freaked out he got at Doe Mountain when some idiot man was sitting, hanging his feet over the edge. I tapped him on the shoulder and offered him the photographic evidence.

DAY FIVE: Sedona hiking

The guy at the bar would have really freaked out if he'd been at Devil's Bridge the next morning... yup, there he is again...

After sitting for a while and watching many people, including children, traipse back and forth across the bridge, I decided to brave the journey myself.

Here's what I learned: if you keep your eyes trained to the left as you walk out, keeping the canyon wall in your peripheral vision, there's no vertigo. Just don't look down or out to the right and it's all good.

For our final hike of the trip, we ventured out on the Broken Arrow Trail, offering 360-degree Red Rock views at multiple points along the way.

End of the trail: majestic Chicken Point.

During this hike, Andy and I both realized that 8 miles a day is about all we want to do before his back aches, my feet hurt, and we're thinking longingly of the Advil we left in the car.

Devil's Bridge is about 4 miles, and the route we took at Broken Arrow (we included a side trip to Submarine Rock) was about 4.5 miles, so at the end of this hike, we were ready to head home, full of Red Rock happiness.

"They tried to bury us. They didn't know we were seeds."

During this season of Lent, I'm interested in everything that gets buried and reborn.

Right now our sidewalks in Texas are ankle-deep in acorns, these everyday miracles of resurrection, these tiny fragile seeds of oak trees.

It seems to me that a lot of us like end product of growth. We like the poetic results of maturity.

"For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit." Jeremiah 17:8

"To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the LORD has planted for his own glory." Isaiah 61;3

Not too many of us, though, love the process--the falling, the burying, the darkness, the breaking open--all the things that have to happen, to make way for new growth.

and all manner of things shall be well."

I want to say thank you to everyone who's sent kind words after my last post, along with thanks to everyone for your patience with my season of silence.

It feels appropriate on many levels that my interior world is dark and quiet during this season.

First, I have my own grief to process, my own pain to bear.

Then, we are in the season of Lent, and that's often a subdued season in the church calendar. A time of reflection, a time of release, a time of darkness, a time to remain in the tomb before the resurrection of Easter Sunday.

Also, I am struck once again that I am always, because of my work as a therapist, a witness to seasons of darkness and grief and waiting-for-resurrection in the lives of others.

I am a witness to darkness and, I am a witness to light.

I'm a witness to light in my own life, healing that comes after seasons of suffering.

I'm a witness to light in the cycles of death, darkness, resurrection, and new life that all the stories of Love has written since time began.

I'm a witness to the light that shines when together we recognize the reality of darkness, stare it straight in the face, and choose Light and Love as our Way instead.

The thing I've realized over time is this: in order to be a good witness, I've got to be an accurate witness.

Culross Abbey, Scotland. photo; me and my cell phone

I've got to accurately witness both the darkness and the light, without glossing over the darkness or creating a counterfeit light.

If I I gloss over the darkness, if I try to make counterfeit light, I'll end up with quick fixes that do more harm than good.

We've all probably had this happen to us: we try to be vulnerable about the deep pain in our lives, and somebody tells us to cheer up and stop being such a Debbie Downer. It just makes everything worse.

But if we're going to accurately witness the darkness and light with others, we've got to first do that with ourselves: go into our pain, be in the silence, learn its shape and its secrets, so that when we come again into the light, we're wholly there, fully present.

That way our witness of light is as real and as true as our witness to darkness, both for ourselves and for others.

When we're accurate witnesses, we don't have the false arrogance to believe that we're in the light because we're good people who have it all figured out.

When we're accurate witnesses, we don't malign the pain of others by suggesting that they're in the dark because they've done something wrong.

When we're accurate witnesses, we walk in the light, we lift our faces to the it, bask in its glow, we share it with others every chance we get. But we never, never think that we've somehow cracked the code and gotten this light for ourselves by our personal goodness, no matter how comforting it would be to believe so.

Something I've learned about being an accurate witness is this: not everybody likes it, and that's painful too.

The truth is, people like to think that they have control. They like to think that they did get this light for themselves by personal goodness, perfect following, or at least by the power of prayer, for goodness sake.

The illusion of control is a safety net, and people love to feel safe.

My own story, my own experience, it often flies in the face of that safety.

People don't want to read my story and know that you can be a missionary and your husband can look at porn anyway. They don't want to know that you can love your kids and be a good parent and your kid can be gay anyway. They don't want to know that you can love God, have doubts about a lot of religious stuff, and be okay anyway.

People like guarantees and my story is not exactly full of them, which means some people don't like my story one bit.

Until the darkness comes to their life, and they need a witness.

And then I'm here to say, I understand.

I know what it's like when the walls all fall and everything is wrecked past repairing.

I know how the pain feels, like it will drag you down and never let you go.

I know how it is, when those who said they would help made everything exponentially worse.

I am a witness to that darkness. I know every inch of it well.

And I also know the light, I'm a witness to that, too.

How the little shoots of green pierce the cold earth in the Spring.

How the ray of solstice-sun gleams down the darkest passage-tomb.

How Love emerges out of devastation, a miracle every time.

That light is Real, and that light is True, and when it shines, the darkness cannot overcome it.

I'm a witness to all of that.

And that's why I say to those who are deep in the dark, wandering a cave underground: